The Battle of Verdun (21 February-18 December 1916) was a major battle of World War I that occurred when the Imperial German Army assaulted the French fortress town of Verdun on the German border, hoping to lure the French Army into a battle of annihilation; instead, it would be the largest and longest battle of the war, and it would see catastrophic losses on both sides. The Germans captured Fort Douaumont in the first three days of the offensive, but their advance was slowed by a costly French defense. French artillery bombarded German troops on the east bank of the Meuse River, and general Philippe Petain ordered that no withdrawals were to be made; instead, the French would counterattack until victorious. Fort Douaumont changed hands several times, as did the double ring of 28 fortresses around Verdun. 120,000 shells were fired at the fort, which was the site of a bloody 22 May 1916 French assault, and it was not until 24 October that the entire fortress was recaptured by the French. Over 100,000 French troops were lost at Douaumont alone, and the Germans began to crack as their supply lines were thinned out by the concurrent Battle of the Somme. The 303-day battle saw around 377,231 French and 337,000 Germans become casualties, with an average of 70,000 casualties being made each month; a later estimate stated that as many as 976,000 people were lost at Verdun. The battle was a costly French victory, as the French reclaimed the Verdun fortresses, and the German offensive would be halted.
Background[]
In 1916, the historic fortress town of Verdun, standing on the Meuse River, was an exposed, lightly held outpost of France's eastern defenses. In the late 19th century, concentric rings of modern forts armored in steel and concrete had been built around Verdun as part of a defensive line following the Franco-Prussian War. In 1914, the initial fighting came to a halt at trench lines outside the fortified perimeter. Verdun was left surrounded by German-held territory on three sides and supplied by inadequate road and rail links to the rear.
Verdun was a quiet sector of the front. French commander-in-chief General Joseph Joffre resisted pressure to strengthen its trench line, which was recognized as weak. In autumn 1915, believing the fortresses outdated, Joffre stripped the Verdun forts of most of their guns and garrisons to feed his Champagne Offensive. In December 1915, Verdun was identified by German Chief of the General Staff General Erich von Falkenhayn as the ideal target for a powerful blow against France.
Battle[]
German offensive at Verdun[]
Map of the German offensive, February-April 1916
German Chief of the General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn viewed the Verdun operation - Germany's only major offensive on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918 - as an attack on France's will to fight. French morale would be hit by the loss of Verdun or by the huge losses sustained in defending it.
Massive firepower[]
The offensive was entrusted to the German 5th Army, commanded by Crown Prince Wilhelm, but Falkenhayn kept overall control of the battle. Through January and early February 1916, a huge concentration of artillery as built up opposite Verdun on the east bank of the Meuse. It included 1,200 guns, ranging from giant 420mm howitzers to 77mm field guns and 2.5 million shells. French aerial reconnaissance over the sector was hampered by German fighter planes. Nonetheless, hints of the German preparations filtered through to French intelligence.
Bad weather forced the Germans to postpone the offensive, originally scheduled for 10 February. This gave the French time to send in two divisions as reinforcements, but they were still outnumbered two to one. The offensive opened on the morning of 21 February with a bombardment lasting seven hours. The French forward positions were battered relentlessly. To the rear, French artillery batteries were eliminated, and communication and supply links cut. The German infantry attacked in the late afternoon, the specially trained troops using grenades and flamethrowers to clear French soldiers from their dugouts and bunkers.
By 23 February, French battalions in the forward defenses were reduced to a half or third of their initial strength and were running out of ammunition and food. The Germans pressed forward through the outer trench zone toward the forts around Verdun. On 25 February, Fort Douaumont, the largest fort, was taken by the 24th Brandenburg Regiment. Before the German offensive, General Joseph Joffre had viewed Verdun as indefensible. Military logic dictated that, if attacked in strength, French troops should withdraw to the west of the Meuse. Politically, however, this was impossible. One of the dead in the early fighting was Colonel Emile Driant, a politician and writer as well as an army officer, who had vigorously criticized Joffre's neglect of the defenses at Verdun. He was now a martyr whose heroic death could be laid at Joffre's door. If Verdun fell, Joffre would be blamed. Wishing to avert this, Joffre sent his deputy, General Noel de Castelnau, to assess the situation. Castelnau duly decided that Verdun must be held at all costs.
Last-ditch defense[]
On 25 February, the day on which Fort Douaumont fell, General Philippe Petain took command of the forces at Verdun. As someone who didn't subscribe to the widespread French belief in the inherent superiority of attack over defense, he turned out to be the ideal person to lead the defense. Petain's first step was to cancel costly infantry counterattacks and focus on artillery as the means to stop the German advance. Guns on the west bank of the Meuse, still in French hands, were used to batter the Germans on the east bank. The issue of supply was vigorously addressed. As French forces built up - soon half a million French soldiers and 200,000 horses were in the salient - a road was made to carry the supplies that needed to keep them fighting. It was known as La Voie Sacree - the Sacred Way.
Afraid that the soldiers' morale would crack under the strain of the Verdun battlefield, with its unprecedented density of shelling, Petain instituted strict troop rotation. In principle, no soldier was to spend more than eight days at the front. By early March, Petain had restored morale and the stubborn French poilus brought the Germans to a halt. Falkenhayn released reserves for an attack on the west bank of the Meuse, but again the French held out, defending a ridge between their positions at Cote 304 and Le Mort Homme. Verdun had been saved, but the battle went on.
The French fight back at Verdun[]
A French war bond poster with Petain's slogan "On les aura!" ("We shall have them!")
Battles on the Western Front defied the generals' efforts to impose a shape and sense of purpose on the fighting. German Chief of the General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn's decision to use a reserve corps to launch an offensive on the west bank of the Meuse in early March was logical: French guns were savaging his troops on the east bank.
But the new offensive immediately turned into a stalemated struggle for control of a ridge stretching between two key French positions, Le Mort Homme and Cote 304. Unable to take the crest of the ridge, the attempted German advance bogged down. Falkenhayn tried again on 9 April, launching simultaneous attacks both east and west of the river using massive artillery support. The German guns exhaused 17 trainloads of shells. This onslaught sorely tired French morale, prompting General Petain to end his order that day with the phrase "On les aura!" ("We shall have them!"). Whether encouraged or not by this optimism, the French held firm.
Battle of the generals[]
In May, the Germans took Cote 304 and Le Mort Homme after an artillery bombardment that in places reduced the height of the ridge by 23 feet. Yet this only brought them up against the next French defensive line at the Bois Bourrus. Falkenhayn was urged by Crown Prince Wilhelm, commander of the German 5th Army at Verdun, to call off the battle, but the German Chief of Staff had become too closely identified with Verdun to admit it had been a failure. Meanwhile, on the French side, Petain's cautious posture was frustrating commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre.
The saving of Verdun in February 1916 had made Petain a national hero, but Joffre removed him from control on the battlefield by promoting him to the command of the Army Group overseeing Verdun. On 19 April, General Robert Nivelle, who shared Joffre's belief in attack, took over frontline responsibility, with General Charles Mangin in command of a division. The French infantry was soon being thrown forward in the wasteful manner Petain had avoided.
The fight for the forts[]
On 22 May, Mangin led a brave attempt to retake Fort Douaumont. Its failure, at the cost of many lives, had a seriously detrimental effect on French morale, and the troops nicknamed Mangin "the Butcher". Ten days later, the Germans mounted a full-scale assault on Fort Vaux. Its heroic defense by Major Sylvain-Eugene Raynal and his small garrison was one of the minor epics of the war. German infantry broke into the building on 1 June, but the French held out in a maze of tunnels and corridors, communicating with the outside world by pigeon. They resisted poison gas and flamethrowers, but eventually succumbed to thirst, surrendering on 7 July with their water supply exhausted.
Battle raged in the air as well as on the ground. It was over Verdun that combat between fighter aircraft was invented, with ace pilots such as the Germans Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke and the French elite of the Cigognes (Storks) squadron contesting command of the air.
Turning point[]
On the whole, the aerial battle was won by the French, but on the ground the Germans held the upper hand into early July. On 23 June, they captured Fleury, within 3 miles of Verdun, provoking Nivelle to end his order of the day with the phrase: "Ils ne passeront pas!" ("They shall not pass!"). On 11 July, using diphosgene gas for the first time, the Germans attempted to storm Fort Souville. This was a desperate moment for the French troops, who successfully repulsed the attack. By then, however, the tide had already turned in favor of the French because of events elsewhere.
Falkenhayn had been forced to transfer troops to the Eastern Front in response to the crisis caused by the Russian Brusilov Offensive in June. The launch of the British-led Somme offensive on 1 July made continuing the concentration of German forces at Verdun impossible. Falkenhayn's great offensive had failed and he paid the price, losing his job as Chief of the General Staff on 27 August.
French success[]
On the French side, Nivelle was now the rising star. With Mangin, he retook Fort Douaumont on 24 October in a lightning attack that combined artillery and infantry. Fort Vaux was recaptured nine days later. By the time the battle ended in December, the French had returned roughly to their position before it began. For this, some 300,000 French and German soldiers had died.
Aftermath[]
The enormous number of French and German casualties at Verdun strained morale and resources on both sides. His reputation sky-high after his successes in the later stages of the battle, Nivelle replaced Joffre as French commander-in-chief in December 1916. The overambitious offensive he launched the following spring led to widespread mutinies in the French Army. The Germans did not launch another Western Front offensive until March 1918. Verdun was remembered by the French as their greatest sacrifice of the war. Remains of French and German soldiers fill the Douaumont Ossuary, a memorial completed on the Verdun battlefield in 1932.
Gallery[]
